


Before and After

by Brunetteairhead



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: AU, Canon Divergence, Episode Related, Gen, Implied Corpse Decay, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Stream of Consciousness, episode 75 spoilers, let me know if i should tag anything else, seriously be careful guys, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22167037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brunetteairhead/pseuds/Brunetteairhead
Summary: AU past episode 75--The town grieves Sammy's death, as told through the eyes of one of Rose's waitresses.
Relationships: Ben Arnold & Sammy Stevens
Comments: 3
Kudos: 37





	Before and After

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely sure what I was heading for when I wrote this, but it turned out interesting, to say the least. Mind the tags: Serious content warning for suicide here. If you or someone you know has been dealing with suicidal thoughts, please know that you're not alone. Below is a link to an international directory of suicide hotlines:  
> http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html  
> Please take care of yourselves, guys.

Everything is quiet After.

It’s not calm. It’s certainly not peaceful. The whole world seems to be standing still, scared to step forward in case the aftershocks hit. Scared that it will lose its precarious balance and send everything spiraling down.

But it’s quiet. Radio silence.

Ariella had only met him twice Before, but it feels like more.

The song and dance of being The New Girl in Town is old hat to Ariella. Her go-to strategy for finding her place has always been to figure out what’s popular and ask people about it. So, when the other waitresses working the mid-morning shift kept talking about “those radio boys,” as Rose calls them, she asked about them.

The stories were wild, even compared to the usual urban legends about King Falls. Alien abductions, zombie PSAs, pet medium consultations, it seemed like everything imaginable had happened on The Sammy and Ben Show. It hadn’t been long before Ariella decided to listen to “those radio boys”—actually men at least six years her senior—while she studied for her exams.

Her chance to meet them finally came when she covered two of Kaylee’s early morning shifts in late November. She was assigned to wait on their table, and Ariella was surprised that they seemed the same on-air and off. Ben gestured widely as he interrogated Sammy on why he couldn’t just give up and admit that werewolves were real. His energy seemed even more endless in person, in spite of the thin, dark circles under his eyes. Meanwhile, Sammy rolled his eyes with an air of loving exasperation with his best friend’s antics. His smile when he took the check from Ariella’s hand was surprisingly soft, and she found herself looking forward to getting to know them better.

But that was Before.

When Ariella wakes up the morning of May 2nd, 2018, her radio alarm is playing static instead of King Falls AM. She doesn’t think much of it. It’s not unusual for her cat to smack the radio antenna while she’s asleep and throw off the reception.

However, as she turns on the television and sits down to eat breakfast, Channel 3’s report that King Falls AM’s radio station has burnt down shoots ice through her veins. Chet Sebastian is suspected of arson, but Sammy Stevens is wanted for questioning after his car is found abandoned outside of Perdition Wood.

They find Sammy’s body three days later. The coroner rules his death a suicide.

Information slowly trickles into the diner. Two unknown next-of-kin—his parents, maybe?—come to get him. They hold a funeral here in town, thankfully. Rumor has it that Ben Arnold and Lily Wright had a knock-down, drag-out fight with the next-of-kin over it. It’s hard to imagine the two strait-laced, severe-looking strangers fighting anyone, but Ben’s split lip at the funeral adds more fuel to the fire.

It’s a little hard to get closure at a closed-casket funeral. It feels too easy for the whole thing to be a lie. But nobody gets an open casket after a few days of laying in the woods.

Ariella’s sure she’s not the only one wondering what happened, but nobody wonders aloud. All anyone says is, “We should know more after the autopsy.” No amount of hopeful listening or implied half-questions tells Ariella if Dr. Rosenbloom or some unknown doctor called in from the next-of-kin’s home city did the autopsy, though.

So, she waits.

King Falls waits. When the autopsy comes in a few months, it will be Over, right? They’ll have answers to their questions, and they can start trying to heal, right?

Three months pass. Four months. Six. A year.

Nobody hears anything about an autopsy.

In the end, there is no Over. Only Before and After.

Everything is quiet After. But nothing is settled.


End file.
